Feb
28
2009
Trying to get a few things cleared away before I start a new position on Monday morning. Shortly after the January release of my GSearch libraries for .NET 3.5 and Silverlight 2, Codeplex user FBrink discovered that my conversions for lattitude/longitude in the local search class were naive, in that they failed when the current [...]
Feb
27
2009
I’ve released version 1.0 of the Silverlight Gradient Editor. This version fixes a few small bugs and usability issues, and adds support for transparent gradient stops using the system color picker. This will probably be the last release of the editor unless I discover some problems. There’s not really much more to do with it. [...]
Feb
27
2009
Since my last “Playing with Blocks” post, on the DragHandleConnector class, I’ve been hard at work (when time permitted) fleshing out the application to get to the point where I could post a demo. That point has finally arrived, and you can see the results for yourself. Here’s a screen shot: There is a lot [...]
Feb
23
2009
The New York Times has an interesting article today on various efforts to search the “deep web”, including a project at Google (of course). The deep web is defined as all the information in web-connected databases, in contrast with all the information that is encoded in HTML on static pages. I’m using the Times’ descriptions, [...]
Feb
19
2009
A snippet of code I saw posted on a forum today goes a long way toward explaining what I don’t like about the var keyword in C#: The writer was simply trying to illustrate a point about calling Measure() on a newly-constructed element in Silverlight. What, you might wonder, is wrong with that code? Well, [...]
Feb
19
2009
Windows users are familiar with the Blue Screen of Death, or BSOD. ASP.NET developers know all about the Yellow Screen of Death (YSOD, naturally). Silverlight development has its own iconic sign of catastrophic failure: the White Screen of Death. Actually, I’m stretching that a little, because I suppose that based on how you have the [...]
Feb
13
2009
Last time out I introduced the DragHandle class, a small control that can be placed on a Canvas and moved around with the mouse. DragHandle is meant to provide one of the building blocks of shape editing in an application I have been working on. I ended that post with the DragHandle built and working, [...]